Selling — The Most Important Skill to Master

“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” — Jim Cathcart

Generally, people think that salesman is not the right profession because salespeople try to make fool customers for selling their products and services. But selling is not just limited to products and services, if we look at all around us, we can feel some sense of selling in every aspect of life. Selling is an essential skill for any entrepreneur or professional to succeed in a career. Following are a few examples of selling in our daily lives —

• Convincing parents to get something is also a selling where one tries to convince them — why his desire/demand is rightful and why should they agree to it,
• Convincing a girl is also another selling where one tries to convince her to go for a date
• Convincing the interviewer that you are the best fit for the company is also an art of pitching yourself
• Pitching a business idea to friends or customers or investors is also a selling where one tries to persuade them — why they should believe it is worthy and has the potential to become $billion business

In every kind of selling, we try to convince another person to take some action on what we want. A successful sale is the one where we get the desired output. But convincing someone for our benefits is not at all an easy task because every person thinks he is the smartest and making fool to him is near to impossible. But here is a catch!

Every person feels that he takes all his decisions rationally and logically, but in reality, each one of us take most of our choices emotionally.

And when a person thinks on the emotional plane, then all he decides to satisfy his emotional needs, not his actual needs.

For example, most of the marketing advertisements are emotional not because they are doing something significant to the society, but they want people to make their purchasing decisions over their product based on their emotions, fear, greed, etc.

But selling is not an easy and straight forward process. Practically, when we approach someone with our product/idea, there are various barriers present in their mind which restrict them to use our product. These barriers can be — the customers don’t feel the need for the product, the customer has other options as well; the customer doesn’t have any plans to purchase, etc.

So selling is not only just about giving a product to the customer and take money back but its the job of a salesman to cross these barriers and convince the customer to purchase a product, and realise them that your product is best for them.

Generally, every good salesperson has their strategies and framework to sell their products which they developed from their experience. Following I shared my framework which I used for selling. Many times I did successful sales using this framework.

Framework of selling the product/idea or convincing someone

Step 1: Understanding the hidden needs of customers — firstly, we have to understand the actual need of the customer which s/he is trying to satisfy from that kind of service. It can be social or material or emotional needs. For example, let’s say there is a coaching centre who provide teachers to students. But students have their motivation to purchase that service; some will join in passing the exam, some want to top in the class, some wants a pleasant learning environment, and so on.

Step 2: Create demand from customer side — Now, after understanding the need of the customer, next, you have to make him realise that he needs some solution through which he can achieve his goal. This step is essential to create demand from the customer side and increase his willingness to purchase some solution.

Step 3: Show him the path towards the goal — Next, your job is to show him the potential of your offering and how it can help him to achieve his goal. Here you can tell some use cases or stories of your product through which others also achieved their goal. It will create trust in the customer’s mind towards your product, and he will be interested in listening more from you.

Step 4: Realise him that your solution is best and affordable — Convincing a customer to pay for your service is not at all an easy task. The customer still has some barriers in his mind, which restricts him to purchase your product. Now you have to realise him that your solution is best and affordable at a given price. Here you can compare the efficiency, usefulness and price of your product with other products in the market

Finally, selling is an art, and it requires practice for mastering it. You have to be patient and persistent with your efforts along with empathetic attitude towards customers. So selling is not a bad thing, you should learn it and get success in your career.

Hope you enjoyed the read! Your feedback and suggestions are always welcome.